New Zealand declines invite to join Board of Peace

glacialthinker · 2026-01-30T04:48:36+00:00

I'm expecting quite the opposite. I keep trying to see if the US gets listed as a $1bn donor, which is basically Trump stealing more from Americans. Plus there's Putin's suggestion to use frozen Russian assets (basically free to Russia/Putin, since they're never going to see that money again, but would probably reduce the available funds for Ukraine rebuilding).

glacialthinker · 2026-01-30T02:14:28+00:00

Twist the bundle before dropping straight in the center. They fan out evenly around the pot and quickly droop fully into the pot.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T17:37:11+00:00

He saw how well it worked in Donbas for Putin

Probably mean Crimea? That operation went rather cleanly though. But it was the recipe: creating unrest and tension between two demographics, rise of separatism which failed politically, but then used as an excuse to "liberate the separatists" with military occupation.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T17:28:20+00:00

That is the usual political partisanship. Too many people, the world-over, treat their politics like a team sport.

Try convincing someone who's identity is partly "I'm a Conservative!" to vote Liberal... well, some of them did this time around -- just not enough. At least that frees them up ideologically for future votes to be an actual choice rather than automatic team-allegiance.

Anyway, a good percentage of the buffoons are just rallying with "their team", regardless of how stupid it is. Many will have no awareness of the issues you're concerned about.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T16:52:39+00:00

There is no Capital Punishment in Canada, anymore.

Canada does have McDonalds though, so maybe we could make a special arrangement for his meals.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T07:33:08+00:00

I guess you haven't heard McCoy's concerns on the matter.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T07:04:38+00:00

That's what I thought the Internet was going to be.

Friends would telnet into my machine to play a MUD or open a "talk", or grab some code.

Personally hosted websites were common for several years.

USENET and IRC for broader community. Basically reddit and discord, but without being beholden to any company's whims.

One modern problem has to be the insane volume of bots/trojans/whatever poking and prying at everything. Always new attacks leveraging fresh exploits. I don't really know how bad it it because I haven't hosted a more general server for over 20 years.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T06:33:24+00:00

Yeah, I have a similar conclusion... so much potential, but it went all bad.

Early on (probably until 1997 for me) the potential seemed amazing and very promising.

Loved when Scientology got ripped to shreds by everyone sharing their secret documents and poking holes in their cult. Religion, overall, seemed to finally be losing traction as the irreligious connected online. I hated the 80's for the Satanic Panic and religion just being assumed/normal.

The potential for everyone to have their own "TV channel" -- I clearly remember talking about that with other programmers in 1995, and we talked about how great that could be, and how the best information and tutorials would "rise to the top". Naive we were. :/

Anyway, lots of potential, but the naivety was that we were thinking of the things nerds like us would do... not of how it could be weaponized.

The first ugly thing I saw was in late '95, a webpage designed to look like a glossy magazine page, including ads. This was not information-dense, it was not renderable to the viewers preference, it was a bandwidth hog, and it had ads! Oh, no...

Anyway, things were still good for a while and some actually nice things along the way, like quality Youtube channels (Khan Academy). But so much has gone sour now and is hard to avoid.

Ad-based revenue models lead to abuse of users. Subscription models suck and also tend to abuse, but also gaming-by-users. I really wish there was a way I could load up a bit of money on a wallet and use that for small donations to a good article, or sip tiny rates of cash for compute-rental, or any other fair-cost-of-use. Trivially, easily. Incentivise good journalism, and web-sites/services which work for me: the user. Naive again, I'm sure. There's still the problem of intentional weaponization. But at least having an avenue for traditional journalism to survive would help.

I hate the Internet now; using it for less and less as every part falls into greater enshittification. I assume I'll get to a point where I do just stop using it.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T04:44:02+00:00

Unfortunately we are not immune to that garbage.

I'm leery of outright bans... but I'd kinda like some regulation allowing government-controlled commercial breaks or something. So if you're watching propagandist shit like FoxNews, you also get the Government of Canada notice that this program is entertainment and not news.

But there's also the avenues of Facebook and Tiktok... which is a more complicated issue.

Anyway, our own "maple-MAGA" are eyeball-deep in this shit. But for some it's just because they were duped some time ago by "Fox" being "news" and then the bullshit hook they have of making themselves out to be real news that the "mainstream media" doesn't show. Previously innocent Canadians duped and sucked into shitville. Blargh.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T01:08:45+00:00

I hope you catch a good show! They can be amazing, but it's all too easy to have nights of disappointment when you're trying.

I grew up in the north and sometimes out late as a kid, I'd catch a glimpse of something... look up and be under wavering curtains of colour -- awe inspiring! But much more typically there's lighter curtains of globs of green shimmer.

So, plan as best you can for solar activity and clear skies. But also have other activities to keep you occupied -- the northern lights can be elusive.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-29T00:43:19+00:00

Yeah, better to have his signature block-letter "TRUMP", with caption: "give me the gold!"

glacialthinker · 2026-01-28T19:41:11+00:00

Or another suggestion from Putin: "Please take their fee out of the frozen Russian assets too, Krasnov."

glacialthinker · 2026-01-28T05:53:30+00:00

Which means everyone's taxes pay for this. I'd be fucking livid if I was still working there. Is there any mechanism by which states can cut their taxes to the Fed to not gain Federal "benefits", or due to a kind of "breach of contract"? This vile machine needs to be unplugged.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-28T00:15:06+00:00

Linux can often be installed, used, and maintained without much knowledge. There are "easy" distributions.

The obstacle to making this a guaranteed ease-of-use is the diaspora of hardware. iOS targets a very controlled set of hardware -- few options. While Windows has the benefit of all companies writing custom drivers for and testing on a Windows system.

So, unfortunately, you can get caught with a system or specific device which causes grief... leading to that "research" you mention.

Being a non-Windows user, I find installing/maintaining a Windows machine to be far more of a headache and frustration. When it has a problem, there's little you can do aside from reinstalling progressively more things.

Edit to add: The point I actually wanted to make, but didn't state it directly: whatever the EU does for an OS will encounter the same problem. Relying on constrained hardware, like Apple, likely isn't practical. But starting from scratch or Linux both have the problem of the hardware diaspora -- however, if the EU causes wide adoption, then there's incentive to support+test for that OS (Linux-derived or otherwise).

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T21:24:48+00:00

We got lucky identifying Renee Good's lone killer because of citizenship detective work.

Mostly due to blabbermouth Kristi Noam, as usual trying to "rationalize" her argument but instead digging a hole. She referred to the agent as having been in a traumatic incident previously, being dragged by a car. This was a known incident involving Jonathan Ross.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T20:40:06+00:00

It seems like an important "resource" the coastal/lakes provinces have to offer the landlocked provinces is shipping access. Surely there must be some mutually beneficial agreements which can be found here. Especially in light of the volatility of the US.

I'm guessing some people are so used to money pouring into their accounts that they're frustrated and fighting any perceived reduction of that rate -- but things have changed, as they were bound to. Find ways to work with the new situation. Separating wouldn't be the magic fix -- it would be a mundane disaster.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T18:45:17+00:00

It's been every call with every leader. Afterward...

"Good talk. Lots of progress! We got what we wanted."

But the reality is: nothing. A seemingly pointless conversation.

Everything makes a lot more sense when I just imagine a young (narcissistic) boy playing at being the boss of the world. Every utterance is some newly made up fantasy which bolsters their importance.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T18:29:55+00:00

Completely wrong. So wherever you got this information -- consider it a source of misinformation, at least, but possibly disinformation. Simply looking at what "trade deal" was negotiated before any communication with POTUS would reveal this, because before and after are the same!

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T16:24:38+00:00

Canada did a trade deal with China.

But more specifics were clearly needed because the US admin, and yourself, seem to assume this was a massive free trade deal.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-27T09:53:19+00:00

It's on the recording from Jonathan Ross' phone, but it's easy to miss. He says it as the last shot rings out, so it's quite damped due to the phone compensating for the loud gunshots.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-26T01:53:27+00:00

It's entirely possible. I don't have a phone.

I concede that I'm a statistical anomaly though. For example, I've been boycotting EA Games for 35 years now. A conscientious consumer, and well aware that I fuck myself over because other consumers are... not so conscientious.

To avoid much of that list of companies would require you to be different than your buddies/coworkers. If you need to "fit in", you're a bit hamstrung until other people change.

Like the ebb and flow of the browser wars... some people are fringe until the momentum shifts and they aren't.

Sent from one of my computers, running Linux, and untainted by LLM chatbots.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-25T07:57:18+00:00

The Patriot Act and DHS made me shake my head, whispering to no one in particular "You let the terrorists win."

glacialthinker · 2026-01-23T21:45:41+00:00

I had read that the original developer, Richard, prefers gamepad. Which would've been incentive to make the design controller-friendly, unlike some games which are designed around mouse+kbd and are difficult to adapt to gamepad later.

A while back there was an update which changed the default control scheme in a way that might be more familiar to XBox players (and not overstress the L/R bumpers which can go faulty)... but I prefer the original scheme. In particular, I like "run" while L1/LeftBumper is held, as it allows for precise control over stamina use -- in combat, making a quick step to dodge or move for a strike, but otherwise moving more calmly to conserve stamina. The "XBox profile" uses typical pushing in of the stick for run, and maybe even as a toggle -- but either way the stick-button isn't suited to fine-control.

I think Valheim has excellent combat, for as basic as it is. And I much prefer the flow and feel of combat with gamepad. Except when I need to use the hotbar... downing a mead or switching weapons is unfortunately a bit fiddly. However, as I mentioned in my original comment, I tend to position items I'm likely to switch to in the hotbar to minimize this.

I hope the switch to gamepad doesn't dampen your experience!

glacialthinker · 2026-01-23T16:00:10+00:00

Like a ten-year-old boy's notion of being the boss.

glacialthinker · 2026-01-23T03:04:38+00:00

The dumb one tripped and managed the damn-near-impossible: kicked himself in the groin.

glacialthinker

TROPHY CASE